Brainoid

Qi Min was eating takeout after going offline when he heard footsteps coming from the door. He turned around and saw Chen Linyou and Wang Xin coming back.

When the two freshmen saw Qi Min in the laboratory this time, they were no longer restrained: "Hey, senior sister, where are you eating takeout?"

She had no problem with calling her lab boss "senior sister", so she responded: "Yeah, the cafeteria is not very popular."

"It's true, the cafeteria is too crowded." Wang Xin came over and looked at the contents of Qi Min's bowl, "Senior sister, what is this? Is it delicious?"

Qi Min glanced at the receipt: "This is called... Duolan Maocai. It's okay, but it's a bit oily."

"Sister, what are we doing this afternoon?" Wang Xin asked next.

Qi Min was a little strange. Didn't she say she wanted to learn Python? Are you going to finish studying after having lunch? "Have you two watched Python?"

"Oh...that...can't you learn it in the library?" Wang Xin asked with some confusion, "Aren't there any experiments in the laboratory?"

"The cells you have passaged must be grown overnight before we can see them." Qi Min said calmly, "Our bioinformatics laboratory generally does not do wet experiments all day long. There is still a lot of workload in processing data and writing code. .”

After she said this, the two first-year students obediently returned to their seats and started Python. Since they were all already Ph.D. students, Qi Min did not assign specific learning tasks to them. He just sent an email telling them that they would have a small meeting on Sunday to test how well they were learning the language.

——

After that, Qi Min opened Jupyter and took a look. The generated code for the full-size brain-like body was all normal, and it was occupying 35% of the computing resources in "Nimbus" at this time.

Qi Min's brain-like body project uses computing resources at the "Nimbus" supercomputing center using a dynamic allocation method. The computing resources allocated to her have no upper limit in theory, but they must be based on the use of "Nimbus" by the computing center research team at that time. circumstances to make adjustments. Although she is collaborating with researcher Zhou Xiaoshan, "Yuyun" always prioritizes meeting the needs of her own research group.

Therefore, even though the total utilization rate of "Nimbus" computing resources has not yet reached half, because the research team of the computing center takes priority in occupying idle resources, there are only so many computing resources allocated to the brain-like body project.

Of course, 35% of "Nimbus" is already very fast. The supercomputers that can really rank in the world are really not comparable to the gadgets in universities. However, Qi Min is still thinking that maybe she can find a way to get more computing resources, so that maybe she can resubmit the article before the Chinese New Year.

Qi Min was just thinking of finding a reason to mention it to researcher Zhou Xiaoshan, and as if there was a connection between them, he immediately received a message from Ke Yue on WeChat.

"How is your project going? Do you still need my account?" Ke Yue asked on WeChat.

Qi Min was a little surprised that he suddenly asked this question without any preamble, but then he thought that there was something wrong with his RNA structure prediction algorithm, and he needed her to "help each other".

"Teacher Zhou agreed to my use of 'Nimbus'." Qi Min replied and continued typing, "Don't you need to run the code?"

This time she received a voice call request from Ke Li.

"What's wrong?" Qi Min picked up and asked, "There is something wrong with the RNA structure prediction algorithm?"

"Oh, you've already guessed it." Ke Yue said with some embarrassment, "Actually, it's not a big deal, it's just... I analyzed the sequence from the company's deep sequencing test and found some strange results."

"Send it to me for a look." Qi Min said.

Ke Yue sent a set of strange results he ran to Qi Min from WeChat. Qi Min opened the compressed package on the computer and took a look at the dozen or so sequences, but could not figure out the reason.

"What happened to these items?" Qi Min asked.

"Wait a moment, I'm sending you the structure prediction results." Ke Yue said, "Okay... look at these things, why do they look so strange?"

Qi Min clicked on his newly issued compressed package and opened the prediction result map corresponding to one of the sequences. This RNA is indeed quite strange in length. In fact, some parts seem to be quite regular, but the rest of the RNA seems to be unable to form a stable secondary structure at all.

"Is this mRNA?" Qi Min asked, "Did you forget to remove the mRNA?"

"No way... I used other people's good TRIM data." Ke Yue said hesitantly, "How to remove mRNA?"

"You just map the sequence back to the genome, and then delete the part from the MAP to the coding region." Qi Min said.

"Oh..." Ke Li agreed with a vague understanding, and then asked, "But I should have already removed the mRNA data, as well as rRNA and tRNA."

It's not mRNA and should be functional RNA, but the secondary structure is almost amorphous... Qi Min suddenly thought: "You didn't remove the introns, did you?"

RNA splicing occurs in eukaryotes, and some functional RNAs can only function after being spliced ​​in the body. The secondary structure of the RNA before cleavage and the RNA after cleavage will of course be different.

"Wait a minute..." Qi Min opened a new PY file on Jupyter, imported the dozen sequences Ke Yue gave her, and used the existing gene MAPPING package to map them to the human genome. Sure enough, she found that several of them The strips all MAP to the same site, but some are missing these paragraphs and some are missing that paragraph, showing that they are actually the precursors of the same functional RNA at different stages of the shearing process.

Qi Min sent the results, and Ke Yue immediately understood: "Oh...it turns out these are all precursors."

It seems that although he is not very good at informatics technology, he still has a basic foundation in biology.

"Thank you so much... If it weren't for you, I really can't see what went wrong here." Ke Li quickly thanked him, "By the way... My structure prediction doesn't take up much computing resources. I can use the laboratory's own The same applies to running code on a host, so why don't you use my account too - my boss is very generous to the people in his lab, and 5% of our lab's accounts can be used first."

5% may not sound like a large figure, but it is also considerable in terms of the total computing power of "Nimbus". And for the 35% that Qi Min is using now, 5% is also one-seventh.

"Then I will use it generously." Qi Min said with a smile, "When the time comes, I will send SCIENCE, and I will give you a separate line in the acknowledgments."

"That's right, if I publish NATURE on this topic, I will definitely have to thank you emphatically." Ke Yue also smiled and said, "Reciprocity is a courtesy."

"How about you wait for me to post SCIENCE first, and then you post NATURE." Qi Min joked, "Let's stagger the publication time of our articles a little, so as not to be caught up in the media coverage."

Most people "academically brag each other", but their "academic bragging" is quite refreshing. When the two first-year students in the laboratory heard Qi Min say this, they couldn't help laughing.

Qi Min hung up the WeChat call and joked to Chen Linyou and Wang Xin who were sitting in his seat and suppressing laughter: "Don't be jealous, you two. Don't tell me whether I can send SCIENCE. You guys work hard in this laboratory. If If I really sent SCIENCE, I would definitely include your names."

"Thank you, senior sister!" The two new doctoral students nodded immediately.

Wang Xin also joked: "Sister, please say it again, I have to record it to prove it."

"What kind of proof do you need? I can write you a note directly and it will be clear at a glance." Qi Min said deliberately.

This sounds very generous, but in fact, if you think about it carefully, it is just a routine operation for the laboratory PI to publish articles and bring students. Besides, after all, Chen Linyou and Wang Xin are considered members of her brain-like body research team, so they must be included when publishing articles on the project.

In fact, everyone has the idea of ​​​​"I want to publish SCIENCE and NATURE" in their hearts, but everyone expects these words to come from someone else's mouth_(:з」∠)_